Question

I’m having difficulty in retrieving values from a Json array. I have a Json dataset that has been created using json_encode. This is how it appears after using json_decode and displaying using print_r:

Array ( [0] => stdClass Object ( [postID] => 1961 [postTitle] => Kiss My Fairy [previewThumb] => 2011/09/Kiss-My-Fairy-Ibiza-essentialibiza-2011_feature.jpg [blogContent] => Ibiza has always had a flair for the extravagant, inhibitions are checked in at the airport when the floods of tourists arrive and the locals have embraced a freedom of partying that has turned the quiet Mediterranean island into the Mecca... ) ) a_post_data_array = 1

The code that achieves this is as follows:

$post_data_URL = "http://myurl.com/news/scrape/facebook-like-chart-ID.php?post_name=kiss-my-fairy";

$post_data_response = file_get_contents($post_data_URL);  

$a_post_data_array=json_decode($post_data_response);  

I now simply need to retrieve some of the values from this array to use as variables. The array will only ever have 1 set of values. I’m using the following code but it isn’t working.

echo "**** -- " . $a_post_data_array[post_title] . "<br>";

Can anyone please help? I’m sorry this is so basic. I’ve been searching online but can’t find any examples of this.

Answer 1

There are multiple issues with your code:

• First you should instruct json_decode to give you a pure array with $data = json_decode($response, TRUE);
• Then the result array is a list, and you have to access the first element as $data[0]
• The entry you want to access has the key postTitle, not post_title as your example code showed. (And unless that’s a predefined constant won’t work.)
• And you need to put those array keys in quotes, like print $data[0]["postTitle"];

Turn up your error_reporting level for some development help.